The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London (15 page)

Lights were not always seen as a positive addition on the roads. Many horses were spooked by these ghostly moving lights, and to make matters worse, ‘The presence of a number of coaches carrying powerful lights...[has] the tendency of throwing small carriages without lamps into the shade...making it more difficult to see them.’ Smaller vehicles, such as donkey carts, pushcarts and all other manner of barrows, were easily overlooked and ridden down. The minor streets in London could be as dangerous as the major roads leading to the metropolis with their much greater traffic. Steamers, omnibuses, tubes, cabs and carriages represented the triumph of mass transport in London itself. Getting into and out of London required something altogether different.

4.

IN AND OUT OF LONDON

One of the more idiosyncratic sights of London was by Smithfield market and Newgate prison, in the centre of the City, where the coachyard of the Saracen’s Head Inn boasted a ‘portal guarded by two Saracens’ heads and shoulders...frowning upon you from each side of the gateway’. Another Saracen’s head frowned down from the top of the inn’s yard. On the boots of all the red coaches waiting there, more miniature Saracens’ heads similarly glared away.

One of these red stagecoaches was the daily 8 a.m. Yorkshire coach, ready to take Nicholas Nickleby to the dreaded Dotheboys Hall school. When Dickens travelled north in 1838 to look at schools as source material for the novel, he took the ‘Express’ coach, which was not actually an express at all, but a slow or heavy coach. The heavy left the Saracen’s Head an hour later than the stage, at 9 a.m. every day, travelling first to the Peacock in Islington (today marked by a plaque on a very drab building across from the Angel tube station), then continuing to Bedfordshire, sixty miles on. There it stopped to light its lamps, for by then it was nearly evening, and it would be another full day before the heavy reached its destination at Greta Bridge in County Durham. Dickens travelled in leisurely fashion, taking several overnight breaks, unlike Nicholas and his poor freezing companions, who travelled as outsides on the top of the coach for thirty-two hours straight.

The stage and the heavy were just two of the many regular coaches. The most old-fashioned method as the century began was the post-chaise, which was a smaller, lighter carriage than a stagecoach, usually with four wheels (some had two), pulled by two or four horses harnessed in pairs and
with the lead horse ridden by a postboy, or postilion.
⁴⁰
When real speed was needed, each pair had its own postilion. The two-wheeled post-chaise carried two passengers, while a four-wheeled chaise held one extra passenger in a dickey or rumble, an open back seat at the rear. A post-chaise was always hired privately, to the passenger’s own schedule, but the chaise, horses, driver and postboys all belonged to the coaching inn or a local proprietor. Travelling post was expensive and, as the stagecoach network grew, it declined in popularity. In 1819, a guidebook needed two pages, with sixty-nine entries, to list the London stables and inns that hired out post-chaises; the 1839 edition listed none. In 1827, when Mr Pickwick and his friends chase after the eloping Miss Wardle, they take their host’s gig to the local inn, where they rush in shouting, ‘Chaise and four directly! – out with ’em!’ and Wardle roars out that there will be a reward if the driver covers the next seven-mile stage in less than half an hour. (Mr Pickwick, more cautious by temperament, frets about moving at that rate in the dark: ‘Pretty situations...strange horses – fifteen miles an hour – and [at] twelve o’clock at night!’)

There were less expensive ways to travel into and out of London. A system of mailcoaches had been running since 1785: these were stagecoaches that carried the post to guaranteed schedules, and which also had space for a limited number of passengers. The mailcoaches were painted brown or mauve below, with black above and on the boot at the rear; the wheels and the undercarriage were all bright red, with the royal arms on the doors, gilt initials on the front boot and the number of the coach on the rear. The driver and an armed guard, who sat behind, were resplendent in royal livery, as carriers of the royal mails: this meant gold-braided scarlet coats for both with, later, blue lapels, linings and waistcoats, and gold braid on the guards’ hatbands. The guard was responsible for ensuring the bags reached their destination and were not pillaged, as well as for keeping the coach to
schedule and taking the fares from passengers who joined on the road; if the coach broke down, it was his job to keep the mail moving.

The mailcoaches were expected to travel at a steady ten miles an hour. One minute was scheduled for the tired horses to be taken out of harness and replaced by fresh ones at coaching inns along the way, although some ostlers prided themselves on achieving the feat in even less. The American visitor Alexander MacKenzie described the change over on the Dover–London mail in the 1830s. When the bugle of the guard was heard, the barmaid automatically drew a drink, usually a ‘heavy wet’, or malt, for the coachmen. As the wheels sounded in the yard, out ran the ‘inn-keeper, bar-maid, stable-boys, mischievous urchins, and all the idlers of the neighbourhood. The horses were pulled back upon their haunches, and stopped as if shot; the reins were thrown down on either side; the whip given unceremoniously to the envied occupant of the box-seat; and the coachman descended, with a princely air of condescension.’ If the coach was full, a third pair of horses, with a postilion, was harnessed at every hill. Even this ‘occasioned no delay; each horse had its attendant hostler...and the business of changing was managed with admirable despatch. A wooden block...was thrust under the hind wheel the instant we drew up...the coachman would nobly toss off the foaming tankard presented to him...and ere a minute had flown by, the guard would say “All right!” as he ascended the back of the coach, the block be withdrawn, and the horses...dart[ed] away at a gallop.’

For outward journeys from London until 1828, passengers booked seats and began their journey at the inn where the horses were stabled, travelling on to the main post office at Lombard Street, where the mailbags were collected and locked in the boots as the coaches clogged up the street, drawn up in double ranks. From 1829, the new, very large main post office at St Martin’s-le-Grand became the starting point, and from there the coaches roared out. Crowds stood by to watch their departure every evening, one of the sights of London. Their speed was proverbial, both a marvel and a worry. In
Little Dorrit
, a man is knocked down by a mailcoach, and all the bystanders agree: ‘“They ought to be prosecuted and fined, them Mails. They come a racing out of Lad Lane [now Gresham Street] and Wood Street at twelve or fourteen mile a hour, them Mails do. The only wonder
is, that people ain’t killed oftener by them Mails”... “
I
see one on ’em pull up within half a inch of a boy, last night”...“
I
see one on ’em go over a cat, sir – and it might have been your own mother.”’ But it was precisely because of this speed that fares were higher than for a regular stagecoach: from 4½d to 5d per mile outside, or 8d to 10d per mile inside.

The mails became woven into the fabric of life, not merely as a symbol of modernity, nor even later of nostalgia, though they were both at different times, but also as a symbol of national pride. The essayist Thomas de Quincey described how during the French wars, from the battles of Trafalgar (1805) to Waterloo (1815), it was primarily the mails that broke the news of each victory. Traditionally, boards had been affixed to the sides of the mails, announcing events of national importance, such as the death of a monarch, to those towns and villages through which they passed without stopping. But during the decade of allied victories in Europe, it was considered a privilege to ride on top of a coach that was carrying the glad tidings. On such a night the ‘horses, men, carriages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and ribbons’. The streets around the post office filled with even more excited spectators than usual, who shouted ‘continual hurrahs’ as the mails moved out: ‘what a thundering of wheels! – what a trampling of hoofs!– what a sounding of trumpets! – what farewell cheers – what redoubling peals of brotherly congratulations, connecting the name of the particular mail – “Liverpool for ever!” – with the name of the particular victory – “Badajoz for ever!” or “Salamanca for ever!”...all night long, and all the next day...many of these mails, like fire racing along a trail of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy.’

As they passed through the towns and countryside, everyone who saw the coach understood the symbolism of the oak leaves and ribbons, while ‘rolling volleys of sympathising cheers run along us, behind us, and before us’. As private carriages approached the mails, passengers could see comprehension dawning: ‘See, see!’ the oncomers seemed to be saying, ‘Look at their laurels!’ The box-seat passenger on these victory runs was always supplied with a stack of the London papers, each one carefully folded so that the headline – ‘
GLORIOUS VICTORY
’ – was uppermost as he tossed a copy into each carriage as it passed in the opposite direction.

Not every run could be this thrilling, although even the regular stagecoaches had a glamour of their own. The drivers, unlike the drivers of the mails, were not in livery but usually wore white coats with, over them, great travelling cloaks, often with several capes attached. Tony Weller, the stagecoach driver in
Pickwick Papers
, wore ‘a crimson travelling shawl...over this he mounted a long waistcoat of broad pink striped pattern, and over that again a wide-skirted green coat, ornamented with large brass buttons...His legs were encased in knee-cord breeches and painted top boots and a copper-watch-chain...dangled from his capacious waistband.’ Unlike the mails, the stage was not legally compelled to travel as fast as ten miles an hour, although that was still the aim, and some even ‘push their speed to twelve miles’. (This was proudly contrasted to Dutch or French diligences, which were said – although possibly only by the British – to travel at less than half that rate.) The coaches were named to reflect their speed: the Quicksilver, the Comet, the Rocket, the Greyhound, Lightning, Express and Hirondelle all became commonplace. It was not just speed, but scheduling, and keeping to those schedules, that were the stages’ selling points. In the 1830s, a coachman on the Cambridge–London route kept a brass clock on his box to ensure that he did his daily hundred-mile round-trip in eleven hours precisely. On the highly competitive London–Brighton run, with two or three proprietors running twenty or so coaches between them every day, several owners promised to refund fares if the coaches were late.

The heavy-stage, or night-stage, was less expensive than the ordinary stage. The heavy was usually an older stage demoted to night duty, so it was also less comfortable, and it stopped more frequently. It was also used by locals outside London as a short-stagecoach, as well as carrying passengers to and from London at reduced fares. When Dickens took the heavy to Yorkshire he was a successful author, but not yet a rich one, and he had a growing family. In
Martin Chuzzlewit
, Pecksniff and his daughters travel to London by the heavy stage: either he is less prosperous than he suggests to the world, or he is miserly, making his daughters travel in some discomfort as, unlike Dickens, they made no overnight stops. The young David Copperfield, too, after his mother’s death, is sent away to school ‘not by the
mail, but by the heavy night-coach, which was called the Farmer’. (What a difference between a coach called the Farmer and one called the Flyer!)

As with the mails, crowds, especially boys, regularly gathered to watch the arrival and departure of the stages at the main coaching inns in London. Thomas Trollope, the brother of the novelist, remembered in his 1820s childhood going to the White Horse Cellars in Piccadilly (originally on the south side, where the Ritz Hotel now stands next to Green Park; later in the century it was on the north) to watch the arrivals and departures: ‘I knew all their names, and their supposed comparative speeds.’ This too was where Esther Summerson in
Bleak House
first arrives in London, having been sent, by arrangement of a lawyer, ‘for
^ded
, carriage free’. Like the Saracen’s Head near Newgate, the White Horse was tavern, hotel and inn combined, providing services to visitors who were staying for some time, to those passing through and to locals.

The façades of the coaching inns were deceptively modest for the size of the businesses behind them. Often the only indication of an inn was a large
archway to the street. The main focus of the inns were the great courtyards at the rear, where coaches were loaded, and the one important element on the street side was the travellers’ room, which from early days had large windows, so passengers could keep an eye out for their coach. Memories tinged with nostalgia recalled these rooms as wonderfully welcoming places, but in reality, claimed Dickens, they were ‘mouldy-looking’; in the
Pickwick Papers
, the White Horse Cellar’s travellers’ room ‘is of course uncomfortable; it would be no travellers’ room if it were not’, while at the Blue Boar even the poker was removed ‘to preclude the possibility of the fire being stirred’.